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10 Reasons You Should Get Involved With The Garden Brigade

We are currently seeking funds to reenergize a vertical rooftop garden. It has been largely stagnant for the last few years and needs new soil and tubing. We will use the Common Wealth Time Bank to pay for community members to tend the garden, teach local youth about permaculture, and use the produce for a pay-what-you-want café and produce stand. Profits will be channeled through an ABC (squared)Economics program to cultivate Artistry, Business, Citizenry, and Charity.

We are looking for people in the Sarasota community that would like to get involved in the project by developing a Kickstarter campaign to help us raise the 1000$ necessary to get the garden working. Here’s why you should get involved…

It Will Help Meet Human Needs - Maslow’s Hierarchy of Human Needs tells us that we must start with the basic physiological needs of food, water, and shelter. Since there is such an outcry over hunger and genetically modified food, and since The Flow Factory’s current location comes equipped with a rooftop vertical garden capable of growing roughly 4,000 edible plants, we feel that this need is both the most important and the most urgent. Our hope is to use this project to recruit a Garden Brigade that will help create gardens throughout the Manasota area to help true PERMAculture flourish by cultivating Positive emotions, Engagement, healthy Relationships, and Achievement.

You’ll Become Part of a Cooperative Economic Movement - When the project becomes capable of being an entrepreneurial endeavor, the time dollars are then transferred into shares of the newly formed company so that the resultant cooperative is community owned and operated, creating a model of interdependency. Revenue from these ventures are then channeled through an ABC (squared) Economics paradigm to further cultivate Artistry, Business, Citizenry, and Charity.

Cultivating Abundance Is As Easy As ABC - ABC(squared) Economics is designed with a holistic economic approach in mind. Just as nature is comprised of the four elements of Water, Air, Earth, and Fire, and humanity is comprised of the four aspects of Heart, Mind, Body, and Spirit, so is our society comprised of the four energies of Artistry, Business, Citizenry, and Charity. Channeling our financial flow in this way with flexible percentages based on fluctuating costs, ensures that the entirety of our community is nurtured as it needs to be and abundance is squarely measured instead of squandered and squirreled away.

We’ll Be Able To Grow a Lot of Food - The project will replenish an unused vertical grow system. It consists of 2 tiers of six rows of 14 towers with an average of five planters each capable of growing 4 plants, resulting in the possibility of 3,360 plants, plus an additional number of potted plants grown on the perimeter. We have removed the coconut core that was serving as the grow medium and wish to replenish it with an organic grow compound, and we would like to replace some of the irrigation tubing that has become overgrown with fungus and mold.

It Will Make Cool Stuff Happen - The produce which grows in the garden will be used in the café being developed on premises and sold at a produce stand operated by youth in the Newtown area near Martin Luther King Boulevard. We are reaching out to residents of Sarasota and Manatee Counties interested in gardening, permaculture design, and organic produce, in specific, the more impoverished region of the City of Sarasota.

The Hard Part’s Already Done - The vertical grow system is already installed and operational. The old coconut core that was serving as the medium has been removed, and the planters are now merely waiting on proper soil. A member of our community will provide the seedlings once the soil and new tubing is installed by the waiting members of the Common Wealth Time Bank.

It’s Good For the Environment and Good For People - The garden project serves the environment by establishing an organic way to grow food locally, diminishing the need for harmful chemicals into the soil or for the vast amounts of fossil fuels it takes to ship food in from other regions. Working with plants is always a spiritually fulfilling activity for those who open themselves up to it. And by promoting this type of industry and sustenance into an underserved part of our community, we hope to empower them to become more resilient and with a greater sense of well-being.

You Might Be In A Movie - We are also documenting the transmogrification of the industrial light warehouse space located at 2035 Cornell Street in Sarasota, Florida into the community flex space known as The Flow Factory so that the measures we take and successes we achieve can be shared with other communities hoping to develop a more just and sustainable economy that cultivates well-being more than mere finance.

There’s a Good Chance You Can Make Money - The project will eventually produce income, and will be channeled to appreciate the work that has been invested, and cultivate further growth through ABC(squared) Economics. As gardening is indeed an art, those who work on the project will receive shares in the venture as the Artists who bring it to being. A portion will go to The Flow Factory to cover operating expenses and marketing. A portion will be channeled toward our Citizenry in order to establish more gardens in the Manasota area. And a portion will go toward the Peace Education and Action Center, the fiscal sponsor of the Common Wealth Time Bank to continue communicating the value of the Economy of Love, Peace, and Relationships.

10. It’s a Heck of a Lot Better Than The Other Alternative – We are reinvigorating this project because world hunger and poverty is being manufactured to energize an unhealthy financial system based on antiquated thinking developed through the lower vibrations of fear, selfishness, and apathy. We feel that food can and should be grown locally and as organically as possible.